The Eternal Bonds Between Mother and Child - a Halloween Tale
by neoxphile
Summary: An old case of Scully's resurfaces at Halloween, and she is unhappy about needing to bring her new partner along to investigate it. (set during season 8)


Title: The Eternal Bonds Between Mother and Child - a Halloween Tale  
Author: Neoxphile  
Written: began October 2016; finally completed October 30, 2018  
Timeline: Season 8, just after Invocation

Summary: An old case of Scully's resurfaces at Halloween, and she is unhappy about needing to bring her new partner along to investigate it.

* * *

Barcroft, Maryland  
October 31, 2000

Although the sun had set quite a while ago, there were still children out trick or treating, and they could be heard yelling in the distance. There were no children in sight at the door to the diner Agent Scully stood before. The evening was already chilly, but that's not what made her shiver. Nor was it the guttering pumpkin near the door that had been carved too soon and was already spotted with a mold that gave it a sinister appearance. Instead, it was an eerie wail of a baby nearby that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

The infant's cry had been close, but not close enough. Looking over her shoulder, Scully scanned the area before yelling "John!"

"What?" her partner called back. He sounded like he was off in the distance and she idlily wondered what he'd found worth wandering off to look at. The former diner they were outside of hadn't had any customers in quite a while.

"I heard the baby. We've got to find her, and quickly," she shouted back, hoping that she was yelling in the correct direction.

She glanced over her shoulder, glad that she wouldn't have to go inside the condemned diner. Her brothers had enjoyed exploring abandoned buildings as kids, but she had always been nervous to. The thought of the floor giving away, plunging them into the cellar, had always made her hesitant. Of course, she had no idea if the diner even had a cellar-

A snap of a branch in the bramble behind her made her heart leap, and when Doggett emerged into the light, she felt a moment of both relief and disappointment. Mulder had been missing for months, but every single time someone appeared behind her, she hoped for a fraction of a second it would be him.

It never was.

"Hey. Where did you hear her?" Doggett asked, completely oblivious to her disappointment that yet again he wasn't Mulder. There wasn't much light, but she could still see the icy blue of his eyes, and it made her think, not for the first time, that despite his also being a shade of blue too his eyes would've stuck out if he'd infiltrated a Scully family photo.

Shaking her head and gathering her thoughts, Scully pointed to the far end of the lot. Past the forlorn eatery's peeling paint, past the broken ice machine outside it, and way past where their car was parked. "Somewhere in that general vicinity."

Doggett peered intently into the darkness. He suddenly grabbed her arm, and she had to force herself not to instinctually push his hand away – she knew that he didn't mean anything by it, and it was important that she focus on what he was saying rather than her irritation. Then he pointed in the direction that they were already looking. "There."

At first she didn't notice anything, but at last she caught sight of something moving nearly beyond the limits of her vision. Whatever it was, it was too big for one of the still happily shrieking trick or treaters.

* * *

 **Ninety-Eight Minutes Earlier**

The drive home from the Hoover building had been frustrating, and it seemed as though a little fog and light rain had erased even what rudimentary driving skills the idiots Scully had shared the roads with from their minds. It had ended up taking her twenty minutes longer than usual to get home, and she hadn't even stopped anywhere, which is why it had come as a relief to finally walk through her front door.

She'd no sooner sat down and taken off her shoes, which were already beginning to pinch her feet like her mother warned her that they would, and contemplated throwing up for the second time that day when her phone rang again.

Her eyes had flown to the caller ID, hoping to see Mulder's name there, but she felt a flicker of annoyance when it was her boss's instead. Stifling a sigh, she grabbed the receiver. "Scully."

"I need you to come in," AD Skinner announced without preamble.

She could tell from his tone alone that it was due to something work related, not Mulder related. "Now?" Scully asked, not bothering to hide her irritability. It had been a long day already, and it was clear that he was about to make it even longer.

"Yes," he replied, leaving no room for argument.

"Why?" she found herself asking. Once she would've gone into the office again without question, but she felt that it was unfair of him to ask her to now, considering he was one of the few people who knew her condition. Even Mulder didn't-

"There's a developing case we've been asked to join. A fourteen-month-old baby named Abigail Powell has been reported missing from her foster family's home."

"And?" she asked impatiently. "That sort of thing happens dozens of times a year, typically when a non-custodial parent decides to snatch their child back."

"This case is no different," Skinner said, surprising her. "The girl's mother is who the foster parents think took her."

"Why would this be an FBI matter, then?" she wanted to know. "And why-"

She never got to ask him why it was thought to be a case for the X-Files division of the FBI in particular, because Skinner answered before she could. "The girl's mother, Carla Powell, is dead."

"What?" Scully asked, wondering if she'd misheard him.

Skinner sighed. "According to what the police told us, the baby girl had been put into foster care when both of her parents committed suicide shortly after she was born. Since then she'd been living with a couple who have been waiting for their adoption of her to be finalized," He paused, apparently gathering his thoughts. "From all accounts the family has seemed happy...at least until someone burst into the house today and took her by force."

"Someone?" Scully asked, thinking that the case had an appropriately macabre bent for Halloween night. Her new partner, John Doggett, wouldn't be amused, but Mulder sure would have been.

 _Will be_ , she scolded herself, just as she had every time over the past few months when she'd slipped into thinking of the missing man in the past tense. _He'll find this funny as hell when I tell him_.

"I thought you said the suspect is the girl's biological mother." _Who is dead,_ she added silently, turning that puzzle piece around in her mind.

"I did," Skinner told her.

"So, she's not dead, then?" Scully asked, assuming that it was a case of mistaken identity. There were plenty of bodies that were mis-identified, particularly if the corpse had been burned or otherwise massively disfigured.

"I didn't say that."

"Right…" She decided to let that lie, and forged on, hoping to prompt Skinner to explain that he thought it was a case of mistaken identity in another way, then. "The foster parents knew Carla, then, and that's how they've concluded the kidnapper is the mother?" she suggested. It wasn't unheard of; kids being adopted by relatives and family friends was a fairly common theme in the Lifetime movies her mother made her sit through, and it had an element of truth to it if the statistics on foster care were to be believed.

"No," he said rather abruptly. "From what I was told the adoptive-parents-to-be never met the child's mother but they described the assailant to a sketch artist and the resulting drawings bear an eerie resemblance to the dead woman."

Less than a decade earlier she would have asked how anyone had a picture to compare the drawing to, but people had since filled the internet with photos, so she could easily imagine that the dead woman had once had a personal webpage now languishing on geocities or angelfire.

"Hmm. What did Agent Doggett say when you told him that?" she asked, going on the hunch that he'd already spoken to her partner.

"Doggett listened respectfully while the situation was described but had immediately asked 'What do you think, power of suggestion?'"

"I take it he meant the parents?" she asked, imagining that the couple had eventually been shown whatever photos that had been found too.

"No. The cops."

"Huh." After a moment she asked, "Where did you say we're going?"

"Barcroft," Skinner said. "Doggett will meet you at the police station there in half an hour." He then proceeded to give her the address.

"Right," she said before hanging up the phone. Before she did anything else she opened two bags of candy, dumped them into a bowl, taped a sign on the bowl that said "take one, please" and put it on the floor near the welcome mat outside her apartment door. It wasn't how she wanted the night to go, and she would miss seeing all of the kids dressed up, but it would have to do.

Sighing deeply, she looked at her uncomfortable shoes for a moment and wondered if anyone would notice if she wore black sneakers instead.

* * *

Barcroft, Maryland

The skittish traffic being what it was, now further complicated by hoards of people bringing their kids out for trick or treating, it took Scully ten minutes longer than usual to drive to Barcroft, and as soon as she climbed out of her car she saw Doggett standing in front of the police department, obviously waiting for her. It made her wonder how long ago Skinner had called him.

Walking up to him, she said, "Skinner told me that you think the cops are just laboring under the power of suggestion?"

"Of course." When she gave him a blank stare, he went on, "They saw the drawing and then photos. It's easy to be swayed by that." Doggett gave her a half-challenging look and seemed to be waiting for her to say something completely outrageous.

Scully didn't give him the satisfaction. "perhaps."

"You're going to go with 'maybe'? Come on, Dana. Even you don't believe that the person who took this kid could really be her dead mother, do you?"

Considering how recently that the two of them had dealt with what had to be the ghost of a murdered child his overt skepticism made her want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until his head lolled. _Good God I hope that I was never this much of a pain in the butt to Mulder_ , she thought as she gritted her teeth.

"Even if the cops were swayed by seeing a picture of the mom, that doesn't explain what made them decide to call us out-" she began to say but her new partner cut her off.

"Yeah, about that," he said and waved to someone behind her, still inside the station.

When the other man approached them she wasn't surprised that it was a uniformed cop. "Hey, what's up?" he asked, sounding wary already. He didn't look a day over twenty-five, she reflected, as he came to a stop. _Was I ever that young?_ she wondered. Of course, she had been when she'd first stepped into the basement office of the Hoover building. "I'm officer Conaboy," he added as an afterthought. "Tyler Conaboy."

"Special Agents Dana Scully and John Doggett. I know that you told our director already but could you walk us through what you saw earlier this evening?" Doggett asked rather abruptly.

The cop shuffled from foot to foot, and Scully didn't think that it was because he was cold. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. In a way she felt for him, but not enough to chide John for being short with him. She was cold, tried, and more than a little nauseous so her willingness to take the time to put the younger man at ease had worn thin.

Doggett stared him down when he didn't start immediately. Conaboy flushed an angry red. After a moment he finally began to speak. "When the Amber alert came in we didn't know what to think. The vast majority of kids who are abducted are taken by someone who knows them and this little girl was put into the system because she didn't have any living relatives."

Doggett interrupted, much to Scully's annoyance. "I've had a case or two like that. Your first thought must have been to wonder if the foster parents had done something to her."

To her surprise this seemed to put the other man more at ease. "That's exactly what my partner Brody and I thought. And when we got to the house the was what we began to look into, more than half expecting that we were going to find a body, not a baby-"

Scully's hand involuntarily crept to her still nearly flat belly without her noticing, and it took biting her tongue to keep from snapping at him that she would still be a baby even if she was dead. _Rein it in_ , she reminded herself for what had to be the third time that week. She'd never really been the sort of woman whose hormones wreaked emotional havoc when in the grip of PMS – except for the occasional anger after finding out she was barren and suffering through the monthly mess and pain for no reason – but she'd already found that pregnancy was a different beast entirely. And she felt like a stranger to herself far more often than she was comfortable with.

"But?" Doggett prompted.

The young cop heaved a sigh and dragged a hand across his face. "Like I said, we were basically operating on the assumption that the baby was dead, but we weren't completely without hope so we did do our due diligence in checking the foster family's story out. The longer they spoke the more unlikely the story seemed-"

Forgetting her annoyance at Doggett's earlier interruption, Scully broke in herself with, "What was the story, exactly? John and I were called in at the last minute and I at least am getting frustrated by the lack of detail." She turned to her partner to see if he thought that her comment was out of line, but he just shrugged in apparent agreement.

More than anything Scully wished that Mulder was there. Her new partner was probably a decent man and a good agent but she was still too irritated with him about how he was handling Mulder's disappearance to have any sort of charitable thoughts about him, let alone ones that might grudgingly admit that he wasn't completely incompetent. His biggest flaw was that he just wasn't Mulder. Mulder would've already gotten all the answers out of the cop instead of standing there in the cold, content to gather whatever details Conaboy felt like doling out.

 _I'm not Mulder either_ , she thought. _Unlike me, he would be in his element tonight. All I want to do is go home, settle my stomach with some saltines, dole out some candy, and go to sleep_.

"According to the foster parents, the father, Greg, had just returned from picking up their two biological kids, Sean and Rose, from elementary school, when the mother, Brenda, went to check on the baby who'd been put down for a nap 90 minutes earlier. Abby wasn't in her crib.

"The parents said that the first thing they did was to look all over the house for the girl," Conaboy said. "She's only been walking a couple of months and it would have been the first time that she managed to get out of the crib on her own, but the mother said that she couldn't think of anything else that would explain why Abby wasn't in her crib after her nap." Scully nodded, thinking about her brother telling her a crazy story about the first time that Matthew managed to escape his own crib. He'd been older, though. Encouraged, Conaboy went on. "Once it was clear that Abby hadn't gotten out of the crib on her own, they called us."

"I don't see what's so unbelievable about that story," Doggett grumbled. "It's a little young to get out of the crib, but-"

Shaking his head, Conaboy cut Doggett off. "Sorry, that wasn't the unbelievable part. The unbelievable part was that when we got there to talk to them, the foster father said that he saw someone staggering out of the yard. At the time, he didn't think much of it, and assumed it was somebody homeless. But once he got inside and began to speak to his wife, he put two and two together. Unfortunately, by the time he ran back outside, the person he'd seen was gone."

"And he didn't see the baby, um, Abby?" Scully asked. She was beginning to wonder why they were so quick to think that the person he had seen was connected to the kidnapping. _Or murder_ , a tiny unhelpful inner voice suggested.

"No. But what he did see…" After he trailed off, the young officer seemed reluctant to continue, but Doggett stared him down. "When we got there, we noticed that there were footprints throughout the house."

"Footprints," Doggett repeated impatiently.

"Yes. Small, but definitely adult-sized. To be honest, I'm not sure how the foster mother missed them when she was still assuming that Abby got out of the crib herself... They smelled like death."

"Like death?" Scully asked, raising an eyebrow. "How would you-"

"My uncle was a grave digger," the officer replied. "A couple years I ran really low of funds between semesters of college. He offered to let me apprentice with him." The young man shuddered, apparently remembering this chapter in his life. "During one of those summers we had to re-bury a couple of bodies that had been exhumed in the course of a murder trial..." For a moment he said nothing more, and Scully didn't have the heart to force him along. "I will never forget that smell. And these footprints, the mud in them, it smelled just like that."

"So what you're suggesting is that this woman crawled out of her grave, and managed to find the home where her baby was being raised, broke in with without anyone noticing, and made off with the baby. Do I have that right?" Doggett asked, voice dripping with skepticism, and Scully wanted to punch him in the shoulder.

To his credit, the young cop gave Doggett a defiant look. "Yes."

"People don't crawl out of their own graves!" Doggett thundered, and Scully had an epiphany.

Turning to the police officer, she asked him urgently, "where did the baby come from, originally?"

Not expecting this, especially after Doggett's attack, for second the police officer just blinked at her. Eventually he said "Rice County, why?"

"Dammit," she swore.

"Agent Scully-" Doggett began, but she didn't let him continue.

"The Millennium group." She hoped that mentioning the group would clarify things, at least for Doggett, and to her relief, there was a faint spark of recognition in his gaze when he looked over at her. "They were a doomsday group that culminated in a bunch of murders, and then attempts to resurrect the dead men's corpses."

"That's what you think we're dealing with?" Conaboy asked, his tone making it clear that he was completely unfamiliar with _that_ particular group.

"That's what I think we're dealing with," she agreed. "I'll need you to go and grab a list of all the possible sightings of this woman." When he hesitated she said "there have been other sightings, haven't there?"

"Yes. I'll be right back," he said, and practically ran back inside, presumably heading to his desk.

Scully stared after the young officer, wondering why it hadn't occurred to him to have them follow him inside the station instead of abandoning them.

Once they were alone, Doggett looked at her. "You dealt with the Millennium group before, haven't you?" he'd asked, tone suggesting that he was entirely confident of what she'd answer.

For a moment a bubble of distrust had nearly erupted within her, making her wonder if everything he'd told her about when he'd arrived in DC was a lie, but she hadn't demanded to know if he'd been spying on her even before Mulder's disappearance because she'd heard him say that he'd read the files more than once already.

"Yes," she said shortly, half expecting him to ask her about when Mulder kissed her; if he _had_ been spying on her she figured that he wouldn't be able to help himself.

"Zombies," he scoffed. When she did nothing but stare at him in response he muttered, "That must've been one hell of a head trip."

"It was," she said with a curt nod.

"Is that what you really think we're dealing with here?"

She shrugged, trying not to wince immediately afterwards. "Unlike Mulder, I try not to pre-judge a situation," she said, feeling disloyal the second the words left her mouth.

"That's what I like about you," he said but his tone implied that it was one of the only things.

She resisted a sigh - it wasn't the first indicator that _he_ wasn't exactly thrilled about their partnership either. In retrospect, she supposed that she hadn't made things easy for him. Because she didn't trust him, she withheld a lot. Perhaps more than she should.

Somehow, though, she couldn't imagine Mulder encouraging her to give him a fair shake instead.

Officer Conaboy practically ran down the stairs when he returned. He was only halfway to them when he called, "We've got a problem."

Doggett waited for him to breach the distance between them before asking, "What's that?"

"We've had multiple sightings of women who fit the description of the biological mother."

"You've gotten reports of multiple zombie sightings? On Halloween night. Who would have thought," Doggett said sourly.

Ignoring him, Conaboy turned to Scully. "Do you want to check out one of the locations? So we can cover more ground."

Nodding slightly, she said, "Okay. But do any of them sound especially plausible?"

"This one," he said, handing her an address. She wondered when he'd found the time to write it down. "The person who called that one in mentioned hearing a screaming baby."

"Huh." Scully turned to Doggett. "Let's go."

Doggett gave her a skeptical look, but did obligingly turn back towards their cars. "Do you want to drive?" he asked, reminding her yet again of how different he was from Mulder.

* * *

 **Thirty Minutes Ago**

Unfortunately, the screaming baby turned out to be an eighth grader's project with a baby simulator for her health class, not a small brunette girl with pigtails like in the photo they'd been armed with. Scully and Doggett reached the home in question just in time to prevent the young faux mother from smothering her electronic charge to get the high tech doll to stop wailing, but since the baby was made of plastic rather than human flesh, there really wasn't anything they could of charged her with, even if she'd gone through with it.

Scully had almost forgotten about the phone in her jacket until a strange buzzing sensation near her waist startled her. "Agent Scully."

"Agent Scully, it's officer Brody Osgood. Did that lead check out?"

Scully looked back at the fourteen-year-old, who was asking Doggett if he had any parenting advice at the moment. "No…"

"Okay. Good."

"Good?" she asked skeptically.

If it was impossible for a silence to sound embarrassed, this one would have. She hadn't gotten a good look at Officer Osgood, but she figured that he was just as young as officer Conaboy. "I mean… We have another lead. One not too far from where you are, actually."

"Oh?" she asked, reminding herself to be charitable.

"Yeah… There is an abandoned diner?"

Maybe it was hormones, but she wanted to ask him why he was asking her if there was an abandoned diner. "And…?"

"One of the mother's old neighbors said that she used to work there," Officer Osgood explained. "I think we should check it out."

"And you said it's near here?" Scully said, thinking that maybe the lead was actually plausible after all.

"Oh. It is. Maybe you and agent Doggett-"

"We will," she interrupted. "Just give me the location."

As soon as she wrote it down, she turned to look at her partner. He was in the middle of miming how to rock a baby. Or at least she figured that's what he was up to. "John? We have another lead."

Doggett looked relieved. "Then let's roll."

"But you really think that will make it stop crying?" The young teenager asked desperately.

Doggett spared her time for a nod, but he hurried out of there.

Scully couldn't really blame him.

xxX

As she pulled up in front of the dilapidated diner, Scully couldn't help but think about the plight of the teenage girl they left behind. Sure, looking after the doll was just a school assignment, but the girl's frustration seemed pretty real.

Despite being pregnant herself, she thought she probably hadn't spent enough time yet thinking about what life with the baby would really be like. Mostly, when she allowed herself to think about the baby actually being there, her fevered imagination conjured up images of him or her being held in Mulder's arms. The few times she allowed herself to think about the end of her pregnancy being reached without Mulder's return, even then her thoughts were of coos and smiles, not dirty diapers and screaming.

"You okay there, partner?" Doggett asked. When she turned to look at him, he gave her a wan smile. "You had the strangest look on your face for a minute."

She shook her head. "This isn't a case I'm particularly eager to revisit," she improvised, as if that could explain her dour mood.

"So this woman… She's one of the 'zombies' that you and agent Mulder encountered before?" he asked, and she couldn't tell if he was trying to humor her or not.

"No. All of the zombies we had put down were male. This woman… I can't say for certain that she's connected to the group, but being from Rice County, it would be a pretty big coincidence if she wasn't."

"True, true. There aren't really that many groups of zombies one could possibly expect to find in the fine state of Maryland."

She tried not to roll her eyes that his sarcasm. It wasn't really her that he was making fun of, not really.

* * *

 **Now**

The first thing that her still nearly night-blind eyes picked out of the gloom was a flash of white that seemed to hover four feet off of the ground. Whatever it was, and her brain was still reluctant admit that it was the dead woman, staggered a bit nearer and finally allowed her to understand that the white that seems so out of place was a baby blanket.

And it was only then that Scully realized that the blanket seemed to be hovering because it was the only thing that was not some shade of grey. The woman, if you could call her that still, was both the color of earth and covered in it. Given that she had once been embalmed, the woman was not in as advanced state of decay as she might have been otherwise. As it was, flesh, though withered, still covered her bones. If the woman's hair hadn't been dirty blonde in life, it certainly was now, with emphasis on the dirty.

The baby was no longer crying, and, with the blanket thrown up over her head as the zombie cradled her against her shoulder, it was impossible to tell from that distance if she was okay.

"Abby?" Scully called hesitantly, earning a disapproving look from her partner. "Abby, can you hear me?"

To her utter relief hearing her name caused the baby to jerk in surprise, and Scully saw her small foot move clear of the blanket. The darkness bleached the colors but as far as she could tell, the small sockless foot looked healthy. It wasn't a mottled gray like the arms that held her close.

Unfortunately, calling to the baby hadn't only gotten the little girl's attention. Dry eyes rolled in Scully and Doggett's direction, and thin lips folded in a look that couldn't be interpreted as friendly.

Scully nearly jumped a foot when she was poked in the arm. Whipping her head around, she found that Doggett was now only inches from her, and her half-formed worry that there might be a zombie dad to contend with too collapsed upon itself. "That woman's **dead** ," he whispered, sounding confused.

"I know, John."

"But zombies aren't real!" His whisper this time was louder, and Scully's stomach dropped when the woman holding the baby took a shuffling step in the direction of their voices. Fortunately, she merely seemed curious, as if encounters with people were something she'd forgotten about.

"Jesus Christ, Agent Doggett. Why can't you believe your own eyes?" she hissed back.

"But-!" Unable to articulate his objections, he settled for waving his arms to show the absurdity of the situation.

Unfortunately, this was apparently interpreted as aggression by the zombie, who moaned and took a lurching step backwards…and farther into the shadows.

"Knock it off!" Scully snapped, eyes glued to the now retreating figure. The dead woman wasn't terribly coordinated so that made her slow, but the last thing Scully wanted was for her to wander into the dark wooded area behind the diner. Sure, they could very likely catch up to her, but her still unsettled stomach didn't need to spend the night being jostled as they tore through the undergrowth in the attempts to locate her before she hurt the baby.

The baby.

It was easy to see Carla as merely a monster, but she'd only come back for her baby, at least as far as they knew. Had she really willingly taken her own life, Scully found herself musing. Had she really voluntarily dropped the veil between her and her tiny daughter, putting them on opposite sides forever? Or had she been coerced into her death like so many cult members before her had been?

The latter, Scully decided. It hardly seemed possible that the woman who stood before them, still gently holding onto the baby despite the horror she'd become, had meant to leave her child. That was something Scully felt ashamed for not relating to more. Oh, she wanted her baby, quite a lot, but she wanted Mulder back more. After all, it hadn't been the baby she'd been obsessing about when she'd combed through the desert, looking for the man who had grabbed Gibson Praise. It wasn't the baby she was thinking about every time she followed up on a lead, not really.

Maybe the zombie was a better mother than she was. Would be.

Shaking these unproductive thoughts off, Scully held out her arms to Carla.

"What are you doing?" Doggett demanded to know in another whisper.

Ignoring him, Scully took a couple of steps forward, arms still held out in what she realized could seem to be a parody of the zombie even though that wasn't what she intended. "Please?" she pleaded, inching her way forward. "Please?"

At first the zombie seemed like it was going to make a run, or shamble, for it, but when Scully spoke she cocked her head in a doglike manner.

Scully was now only ten feet away. "Please?"

Carla stood her ground, one boney arm clutching the baby a bit more possessively. In her arms Abby began to whine.

Scully wondered then why the baby had been so quiet. She was clearly awake. Did she recognize her mother on some level, even though she'd only been a few weeks old the last time she'd been in her arms? Under the rot and ruin was there still a familiar smell? Did she look enough like she had in life that Abby knew it was her?

"Carla, please?" Scully begged, closing the distance between them so very slowly. The zombie gave her what seemed to be a wary look, but it was hard to read emotions in those desiccated eyes.

"I know you want what's best for your baby-"

"Agent Scully!" Doggett roared. He was still standing where she'd left him. "You are too close to that, that thing. Draw your weapon!"

"It's okay, it's okay," Scully soothed. "He's all bark and no bite. I am not going to draw my weapon, it's okay." More than anything she wished she knew if the zombie could understand anything she was saying, or if it was just her tone that was calming, much like keeping her late Pomeranian from lashing out when he was scared.

Looking over her shoulder, she shook her head hard when she saw her partner reach for his own gun. Scowling, he allowed his hand to drop back to his side. But she knew that there was still a risk that he would still draw and fire if the zombie attacked. Her only concern about that was her or Abby being hit accidentally.

Scully gestured imploringly. "I know you love your baby, Carla. I…I worry about mine too."

In that instant Carla the zombie gave her a look that was quite obviously suspicious, alerting Scully that at least some of what she was saying was sinking in after all. Scully put her hand on her belly, and the zombie became less agitated.

"I know you want what's best for her," Scully continued in a low voice, glad that Doggett was too far away to have heard what she'd said about her own baby. "But you know that's not _you_ , don't you, Carla?" she asked as gently as could, and braced for a reaction.

The only reaction was a low growl, much like you might hear from a cornered dog.

"I understand that you wanted to see Abby again, to say goodbye like you hadn't been able to before, but Abby has to grow up with living people. She wouldn't want you to hang on like this, miserable, even for her."

The growl dried up, and the zombie's expression changed. At first Scully couldn't identify it, but then she realized that it was sadness. Or maybe regret.

"Abby's doing so well," Scully told the zombie, and it somehow did not feel ridiculous to be filling a zombie in on her daughter's life. "She's walking, and starting to talk, and the family that she lives loves her very much. Her adoptive parents, her big brother and sister…they only what what's best for her, and they're praying that we get the baby home to them safe and sound."

She glanced back, making sure that Doggett was still where she'd left him. He was.

"Only you can make that happen, Carla. Please give me the baby so I can bring her home where it's safe. It's too dark and cold here for a baby. Please let me take her home. She can't stay here. Please."

When the zombie moved, it was so fast that Scully had no time to react. She dimly heard Doggett shout behind her, and waited to feel teeth grip her throat, but instead her arms were suddenly burdened with Abby's weight. Startled, she barely was able to close her arms around the baby before she fell, and Abby squeaked in alarm, prompting another uneasy growl from the zombie.

"I've got her," Scully crooned, trying to reassure all three of them at the same time. Carla's eyes raked over her, apparently checking to make sure that was true, and then she lunged away. "Thank you," Scully said in genuine appreciation. "I know it's hard to do what's best for your baby, especially when it means not seeing her again. I'm so sorry."

If the zombie heard her, she gave no indication. Instead she increased the distance between them. Her dry eyes were only on the baby that Scully clutching in her arms. Her face was sorrowful, an expression that seemed out of place on a zombie.

"She'll be okay," Scully said, repeating that over and over again, even after the zombie turned away and walked off.

Carla was just getting beyond their line of sight when Doggett reached her. "Are you okay?" he demanded to know. "Is the baby?"

"We're fine. We're both perfectly fine," Scully said, although in truth she hadn't taken the time to look the girl over. Somehow she just knew that Carla had done nothing to injure the baby that was quietly weeping in her arms.

"Are you sure?" He pulled the blanket off the baby, examining her for himself. "Not a scratch on her, I'll be damned."

"I told you-"

"You were reckless," Doggett snapped, cutting her off. "And damn lucky that nothing happened to either of you. What were you thinking?!"

Had she been reckless? It hadn't seemed like it at the time.

"We can't let this happen again," she said quietly, but this got her attention. "She went that way-" She pointed in the direction the sounds of a person lumbering through the sparse woods could be heard from. "I need you to finish this. Double tap, two to the head to be sure, John. We'll meet you at the car."

"I-"

Scully shook her head tiredly. "She'll come back, John. She won't be able to help herself. Her desire to know that Abby is okay is too strong."

"Right." He sighed with grim resignation. "Meet you at the car."

* * *

Scully walked slowly to the car, talking to the baby she held in her arms. "You are so loved, Abby. Your family loves you. And she loves you too. She loves you so-"

The sound of two shots in rapid succession cut off the rest of what she was about to say. Instead she sighed raggedly, feeling both relief and a sadness that was completely unexpected.

"I hope I'm as strong as your mommy, Abby, if I ever have to be. I really do."

The End


End file.
